ABSTRACT
Despite the invitation and welcome Indian writers received into mainstream 1970s American literary culture, those writers were frequently “caught in a tyranny of expectations.” As Elaine Jahner notes, non-Indians often expected Indian writers to assume the role of either “mystic exemplars of an archaic sensibility” or “colorful rebels and tragically powerless victims of technology” (Jahner 1981: 343). On the other hand, Indian political leaders often expected Indian writers to represent their struggles-past, present, and future-in the same stereotypical ways non-Indians hoped to see Indians portrayed, to serve the purposes of various causes. The role “visible” Indians played then and, indeed, play now often amounts to “representation” of all Indian peoples and causes. Perhaps more than any other Indian writer of that time, James Welch (Blackfeet/ Gros Ventre) has resisted both prescriptions for Indian writing. Instead, in his works, Welch presents cultural losses and individual struggles for cultural survival in satirical and ironic ways, thwarting the possibilities for nostalgic catharsis. Yet Welch’s realism, his refusal to paint a rosy picture of contemporary Indian life, paradoxically embodies a politic all its own, a politic based on the way things were then, and still are, for many Indian people.
